


WINDWARD

by kairiolette



Category: Free!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-27
Updated: 2015-11-27
Packaged: 2018-05-03 16:32:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,154
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5298398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kairiolette/pseuds/kairiolette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“My home’s the world,” he says, leaning in toward Haru, a glimmer to his eyes. “How much of it have you seen?” (RHweek2015, day 5: official AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	WINDWARD

**Author's Note:**

> based on [this](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CSpY_HcUsAAvOdu.jpg:large) official art (with some liberties!)  
> & [here](http://kairiolette.tumblr.com/post/134078286607/windward) on tumblr!

On other days, and perhaps in another climate, Haru would find a trip up to the crow’s nest enjoyable. Today, though: thick white fog shrouds the view of the ocean and even the deck below, and brisk winds at this height smart like knifepoint. Rin, bundled in less clothing than Haru yet seemingly in his element, frowns at his shaking shoulders.

“I forget you’re adjusting to the weather,” he says, offering a sorry smile, and then he peels off his topmost layer - a burgundy down jacket, somehow unweathered, which he swings around Haru’s shoulders. He then takes a rightward step, leaning back against the low wall of the nest, relieving Haru’s face from the blistering chill. “I’ll block the wind.”

Facing leeward his hair swirls around his face. Haru, unashamed to pull the coat tighter around his shoulders, is adjusting indeed. He has been on board three weeks now, a kidnappee starting to feel more like a stowaway, and as stuffy as his uniform had been, it didn’t insulate against the frost; even with arctic garb he is growing accustomed to a permanent numb nose and frozen fingers. And then there’s Matsuoka Rin, the pirate captain out of no storybook ever present in Haru’s childhood, with a crew just as eccentric. There are some things, Haru thinks as he eyes the captain before him, he’ll just never adjust to. 

“I notice you rarely mention home,” Rin says. The observation makes Haru tense. He has been freely permitted to write letters to whom he pleases and he has taken advantage of this allowance just once when they docked briefly last week—a sizeable note to Makoto, telling him, among a few other things, not to worry. Other than him, he rarely thinks of home. He tends to get distracted when aboard a ship.

“My home’s the sea,” Haru declares, and bristles when Rin makes a face that suggests he expected that answer. The crow’s nest, a glorified basket, is not three feet in diameter—Haru can detect easily, even amidst the fog, the moment Rin’s mouth stretches into a lopsided grin.

“My home’s the world,” he says, leaning in toward Haru, a glimmer to his eyes. “How much of it have you seen?”

The goading words unsettle Haru as the frigid air does. Another aspect of Rin he has yet to get used to—he strikes some base desire within Haru to jump higher. Tugging the coat tighter under his chin, his numb face pulls into a frown.

“Why did you call me up here, Rin,” he demands. Yamazaki always teases Rin when he lets the hostage get away with calling him by his first name, so Haru does it every chance he gets. For the first time since they ascended the flimsy rope ladder, Rin looks elsewhere; into blankets of opaque mist. Maybe he can see beyond the wall of white around them. The pallid surroundings color his eyes.

“I need your help,” he says, and his eyes flit back to Haru, suddenly serious. For the three weeks Haru has been on board, he hasn’t been told the explicit purpose of his kidnapping, though he had expected it had something to do with his ability to navigate through waters - a pesky talent that made him aggravatingly famous among sailors and, evidently, pirates further north than Haru ever imagined.

“What are you searching for?” he asks. Another inference, gleaned from hushed whispers and a quieted agitation under the surface of Rin’s composure. Haru watches him each morning, standing at the helm of the ship against a calm sunrise with an expression as warring as if he were navigating through a storm. His question makes Rin laugh, a sharp bark that echos through the moisture.

“You’re smarter than Sousuke says you are,” he teases, and before Haru could feel chagrined by the comment or the laughter, Rin settles back into somberness. His emotions are tangible. Even the wind seems to catch fire when he laughs or halt in its tracks when he falls silent. At once he seems larger than life and too human; the contrast boils something inside Haru.

“It’s a medallion,” Rin replies, finally. “A golden medallion.”

“A stolen heirloom,” Haru supplies, and again Rin’s eyes sparkle with a smile. Haru should assume Rin is the one who does the stealing, as a pirate, but that, he supposes, is where his story diverges from storybook. After three weeks on board, he doubts Rin is capable of any harm, and that goes doubly for his crew. (After all, he assumed Yamazaki must be their weaponsman, or Rin’s murderous firstmate, but he turned out to be the ship’s cook as well as, Haru guesses, some sentient seagull scarecrow of sorts.)

“Exactly. It was my father’s.” The slow way he speaks it tells Haru that his father has passed. The angles of that devastating face seem to bow with the heaviness of the words, and rather than the opposite, the surrounding gray reflects his grief. Before Haru can wallow in it, Rin lifts himself up once more, oozing a contagious sense of vengeance as he meets Haru’s eyes with a force that could knock him over. “We’re going to the ends of the earth to steal it back.”

“Who took it?” Haru asks in a breath, irreparably curious. It’s exasperating, the way he is drawn to Rin, the way question after question spills out of his mouth without his own permission. Rin doesn’t answer immediately. Haru clenches his teeth to keep them from chattering.

“Death,” he says, finally. He matches Haru’s bewildered expression with a weary one.

“Or so, that’s the legend,” he clarifies, pushing through the hair on the back of his head with a gloved hand, smiling distantly. “I was just a boy when it happened.”

A fatherless boy on a mission of vengeance, on pursuit of stolen treasure, death as imminent as tide. Maybe Rin is more storybook than Haru thought. Haru wonders where he would fit into the tale.

“You wish me to lead you to Death?”

“We’ll all come out alive, I promise you.” His arms jerk forward briefly, a clipped movement, like he wants to clasp Haru’s hand and fervently squeeze it. Haru’s fingers are so numb, he isn’t sure it would make much of a difference. His eyes implore Haru’s desperately, without pretense. While Rin’s emotions are distinct and measurable so that even Haru can empathize, Haru knows not the tempestuous boiling in the pit of his own stomach.

“How can you make that promise?” he demands, his voice echoing hoarsely against the wind. Rin’s eyes don’t waver from his own.

“I’ve trumped death before,” he swears, and then he grins, broad and cocky, and something in Haru ripples like wind over water. He swallows over his parched throat.

“Why do you need me?” he asks, voice levelled enough for Rin not to assume his agreement. Rin’s smile softens.

“No one knows the waters like you, Haru,” he admits, and Haru doesn’t recall Rin ever calling him anything other than Nanase before. Rin scoffs to himself, placing the tips of his fingers against his forehead, “Even I can’t deny your prowess, though your methodology is less than conventional.”

Haru has heard lines like that before, though he supposes he recalls the specific incident Rin rubs his temples over. When they were further south, the weather like the warm side of an autumn day in Iwatobi, Haru had shucked his clothing at around noon and dove overboard. His brief submersion, before Yamazaki had dove in after him and dragged him back to the ship, had at first been wholly selfish as well as a successful attempt to enrage Rin. But his contact with water also gained him insight that allowed them to steer clear of a rogue serpent headed in their immediate direction—that gift of his, not merely a curse that gets him kidnapped.

Rin watches him expectantly, seeming smaller without his heavy coat on. Haru wishes he could instead go for a swim; now, regrettably, they were far too north for Haru to make any contact with water without turning into a block of ice. And he had promised a furious Rin he wouldn’t jump ship again unless he wanted to walk the plank.

“It’s too much effort,” Haru says, though even he doesn’t buy the way his voice seems to crackle. Rin crackles differently—a spark of fiery anger flashes across his features, coloring the mist. He kindles it, tamps it down, adjusts his anger until he once again looks as forlorn as the fog, and Haru would stick around if Rin promised never to look so gray again.

“It will be a huge effort,” he admits. He looks down to his boots as Haru scans his face, begging,  _ask again, keep asking_. Matsuoka Rin is a kind captain; any other hostage would not have a choice. And Haru feels less like a hostage and more like he’s on any other job; in fact, Rin ties up Nitori and Mikoshiba more than he ever restrained Haru.

“We will bring you back to your Iwatobi, if you wish,” he says, solemn, though not without sympathy; he will not find Haru guilty of choosing home, and it comes as no wonder to Haru that Rin’s crew remains as loyal as dogs to him. As enigmatic as Haru finds the captain, his tough and scary front seems to be just that—and, perhaps, that is part of what makes him such an enigma. Just a week ago Haru witnessed him bawling over a tragic bard’s tale Nitori had read aloud at sundown. No one seemed troubled by this outburst, a common occurrence on the ship, but for Haru it might as well have been raining.

A strong gust rattles the lookout and Haru squeezes his shoulders against his ears. Rin reaches forward, affixes the clasps of his coat under Haru’s chin so the fur lining of the hood and collar sits against his windchilled cheeks.

“So what do you say, Haru,” he starts, that competitive edge to his voice, though less playful than before, “Travel this great big world with me? Or turn the ship around, healthy and homeward bound?”

He has a way of speaking that makes Haru believe they are the only two alive in the world. Rin’s expectancy stills the air. Haru scowls, breath puffing out visibly, and he tucks his hands under his armpits.

“Did we have to talk up here?” he asks, though the cold is nowhere near as incapacitating as it is when night falls. Just two days ago he had to share a bed with Rin, the nighttime temperature dropped so dangerously. It was exhilarating and humiliating how Rin seemed to retain heat as if his skin were thick, though Haru knows by touch it’s as thin and warm-blooded as his own.

“I didn’t want any distractions,” Rin scowls darkly. The crow’s nest is the only place the wind doesn’t carry Mikoshiba’s voice, which is why they so often lovingly stick him up here. Rin brushes his flying hair out of his face and behind his ears and looks down to the billowed masts. “Wind is good for us.”

“I’ll stay on,” Haru blurts, a fire to his voice he had not known he could muster amidst such ice. Rin perks up, eyes wide in surprise. Haru looks over his shoulder at bleak white fog; maybe he can see past it, too. “A trip all the way back to Iwatobi would be troublesome.”

Rin’s laughter rings.

“I knew you would,” he exclaims, too haughty for Haru’s liking. Haru squints at him, and Rin just laughs again, a joyous sound that rises temperatures. He tilts his head, smiling warmly, “You’re hard to read, Haru, but I can tell a man hungry for adventure when I see one!”

“You’re wrong,” he mutters, looking over his shoulder once more.

“Am I?” Rin teases, but, of course, even Haru knows he isn't. Haru squares his shoulders, braving the candid way Rin speaks and the unbearable cold with a clenched jaw.

“We move south from here at once,” he says, and Rin nods before the words even leave his mouth. Haru can’t think of anything else to leverage out of this. Rin has already promised him the world. He reaches out his hand, wondering belatedly if pirates shake on deals. “And Yamazaki stops calling me Cabin Boy.”

Rin grabs his hand with both of his own, shaking with gusto. His smile is almost childish.

“Deal, deal!” he laughs, bringing Haru’s gloved knuckles to his mouth. His eyelashes bow like fans. “I’ll show you sights you’ve never seen before!”

Haru snatches his hand away, though perhaps he is grateful for the heat that thaws the apples of his cheeks, and he lets Rin happily lead him on their first undertaking: down the ladder and to the solid deck once more.


End file.
